If ICBMs can reach practically anywhere in the northern emisphere why do countries worry about misiles placed in a neighbouring country?
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ICBMs are super expensive, and very unlikely to be used. Ordinary surface-to-surface missiles are much cheaper, Russia’s using them every day in Ukraine. Nobody wants it to be cheap and easy to attack them.
They still have to travel through the air to get to their target. Close the distance and it is harder to shoot them down / react before they hit.
If you’re targeted by said neighboring country they can reach their target quicker and with far less warning than if they’re launched from halfway across the world.
ICBM is not the only missiles out there. They are just the biggest which can go the furthest. The closer you are the smaller the missile you can use for the same payload and the shorter time it takes to go to the target which means they are harder to shoot down or counter and they are cheaper so you can fire more of them. So people are not so much worried about ICBMs in their neighboring country but rather the shorter range missiles they posses.
It has to do with the amount of time between launch and detonation. The shorter the trip, the shorter the time, the less time they have to defend themselves.
Time
An ICBM can hit pretty much any target in the world in about 30 minutes. Near or far, its about 30 minutes.
The time to hit is known and factored into defense against them. it means you have time to detect the launch, confirm the trajectory, notify defense crews (if there are any that can work), and *launch your counterattack* all before the missiles hit.
But what if I station a smaller missile that doesn’t first launch its warhead into space but takes a much flatter trajectory to get to you, and I place it a lot closer, say just 500 km. Well now my fancy rocket that does 2,000 m/s only takes a bit over 4 minutes from launch to nuclear detonation.
Can your command and control system successfully identify an incoming missile and get its counter attack in the air before mine hits and disables your ability to? Are you willing to take the chance the answer is no? Am I?
The further away the missiles are the less likely a decapitation strike is to work and prevent a counter attack.
Time to react, ICBM are relatively slow compared to a short range launch. A short launch can be done with cheaper missiles, so it opens the chance of having more of them.
Also I bet that if the enemy is close enough he can also do all sorts of things to jam your response. For example, there are planes that carry jammers that can be even hundreds of kilowatt in power. It basically fries or blinds any radar in the area by emitting an enormous radio noise. This is doable if they are close to you. If you are on the other side of an ocean there is little the enemy can do except launching few big very expensive missiles.
Even though they are flying at hypersonic speeds, they still need time to reach their target. So, for example, instead of 20mins from the US to Moscow, if you place missiles in Ukraine, they will need only 2mins or even shorter. So, Russian response would need to be much quicker. To decide, is that real nuclear missiles, or is it some satellite lunch or some other test or exercise? And this is also dangerous for the whole world because during the Cold War, we avoided nuclear wars because sides had time to decide should they act on some radar or satelite detection or not. Both in the USSR and the US, we had false positives on ICBM lunches..
If this happens, you will have some officers monitoring radar and early warning systems and waiting to lunch counter strike asap, no time to think twice. And you know how reliable is Russian tech. Sooo… please no..
This is similar to the situation with Cuba and the USSR.. The US is still sanctioning them to this day; they even had invasion..
ICBM are expensive, not accurate, and take long time to travel while other country can intercept or prepare for impact
Missiles next door are much cheaper, thus a lot more can be fired, faster and more accurate.
Additionally having military from country A in another country tends to increase ties with country A and cut them with C
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